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Overview

Linda Robinson is a senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. Her current research centers on the U.S. strategy to counter the Islamic State, gray zone conflicts, building partner capacity, and special operations forces. She recently testified before the U.S. Congress on U.S. counterterrorism policy. Her recent publications include Improving Strategic Competence: Lessons from 13 Years of War (2013), a Council on Foreign Relations report on special operations, best-selling and critically acclaimed books, including: One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare (2012); Tell Me How This Ends (2008), and Masters of Chaos (2004). She is on the advisory board of the National Defense University and chair of the Army War College board. Prior to joining RAND in 2012, Robinson conducted research as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a senior adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a senior consulting fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and at Booz Allen Hamilton. Prior to these positions she was a longtime foreign correspondent and a regular commentator on PBS Washington Week in Review. Robinson has traveled extensively in the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America for her work. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Robinson received a B.A. with high honors from Swarthmore College in political science, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and received the Maria Moors Cabot prize from Columbia University.

Commentary

The Islamic State group has been defeated in Mosul. But this military routing isn't enough to ensure lasting stability, either in Mosul or in Iraq more broadly. What comes next will require careful planning, diplomacy, implementation, and coordination.

U.S. special operations forces are not providing the muscle of the frontline combat troops fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Instead, they are providing meaningful support to the various indigenous forces. If they succeed, this model could become a standard option in the U.S. military playbook.

The Trump administration needs to articulate its policy toward Syria and Russia and its campaign to counter the Islamic State group. A coherent national security strategy could steer the U.S. through these complex problems.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have retaken the east bank of Mosul and are planning to take the west soon. The military operations that oust ISIS are crucial to the city's liberation but failing to get the civilian response right risks a widening civil war.

However critical to the fight against ISIS, using special operations forces for raids represents only half of the needed military adjustment. The other half is the effort to build indigenous forces capable of taking and holding territory in Iraq and Syria.

'God Is Not Here' shows how not to send a soldier to war. The experience is searing and often brutal, and only a well-led, well-trained, cohesive unit can help servicemen and servicewomen do their duty and survive both mentally and physically.

The story of how private military security companies came to play a pivotal role in wartime operations is an important one, and Ann Hagedorn, a former reporter for the Journal, was right to take it on.

The mission of preventing al Qaeda from threatening the U.S. is an enduring one that will require a long-term commitment not just to counterterrorism, but to training, advising, and assisting Afghan forces so that they are better able to prosecute their own campaign against terrorists.

If 2013 was the year of decisions, 2014 will be the year special operations forces implement their roadmap for the future. But where exactly does that road lead? The trajectory will be determined by several budgetary and policy choices that the U.S. military, policymakers and Congress will make in 2014.

The chief political drawback is that target countries' populations view drone attacks as violations of their sovereignty every bit as much as manned raids. The chief military drawback: A drone attack destroys the critical intelligence that is needed to ensure that the tactical strike can be converted to strategic advantage.

Drones are just one of three principal U.S. counterterrorism tools. Special Operations forces are now relying on a more balanced mix of tactics: Launching raids and developing partner forces offer more versatility than drone strikes and will probably become the wave of the future as America's big wars wind down.

A new model for our nation's special forces could follow the approach used in Colombia and the Philippines, where special forces planned ongoing campaigns that use numerous advisory, civil affairs, and informational activities to address those governments' weaknesses in providing security and ending conflicts.

Apr 8, 2013 USA Today and CFR

Publications

Presents findings from six historical case studies in which the mission of special operations forces in each of the six countries transitioned over time to include some level of inclusion in the U.S. embassy's Security Cooperation Office.

This report investigates humanitarian and stabilization needs in Iraq, through a case study of Mosul, and offers recommendations for immediate actions for stabilization after military operations to liberate it ISIS.

These video conference proceedings present panel discussions from a daylong conference on the evolving terrorist threat, which took place on June 27, 2017, in the Washington office of the RAND Corporation.

This report assesses the campaign against ISIL, focusing on the military and political aspects of the effort. While some degradation of ISIL has been achieved, lasting defeat will require more capable indigenous forces and political agreements.

This report examines the 2001-2014 experience of U.S. special operations forces in the Philippines and the activities and effects of special operations capabilities employed to address terrorist threats in Operation Enduring Freedom -- Philippines.

Hybrid irregular and conventional military operations are playing an increasingly prominent role in international conflict. To counter this trend, the United States should adopt a new form of operational art for special warfare.

RAND authors analyze the options for using special warfare to fill the gap in coercive strategies between the costly commitment of conventional forces and the limits of precision-strike campaigns, including its characteristics, advantages, and risks.

In the face of adversaries exploiting regional social divisions by using special operations forces and intelligence services, and dwindling American appetite for intervention, the United States needs to employ a more sophisticated form of special warfare to secure its interests.

In One Hundred Victories, acclaimed military expert Linda Robinson shows how the special operations forces are -- after a decade of intensive combat operations -- evolving to become the go-to force for operations worldwide.

Quoted

[Syria] is not a country that we control. This is stabilization light. We do not have, nor do we intend to get, control of the place, which would enable us to move and do these state-building activities.

If [U.S. SOF] succeed in ousting ISIS from Mosul and Raqqa in the coming months, this new way of combining forces and using SOF to direct a ground war could become a model for conducting low- to mid-level combat.

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